Words' End

Dear Nico,

Yesterday you turned fifteen months old. As unhappy as this last month has been for your city, and for so many other places, you remain cheerful and loving.

You speak in sentences. We woke up one slow Sunday morning, and you said, “dog say woof.” I said, “oh yeah? What do cats say?” You didn’t answer, but when I asked you where our cats were, you said, “I don’t know!” And fair enough: they aren’t allowed in the bedroom at night, so who knows where they go when they’re behind the closed door! Having said these things, you proceeded to get off the bed safely, butt first.

Physics is a lot better now. Bath time is more awesome for your ability to squeeze the squirt toys. You hold your own bottle, which took an inexplicably long time. You can stand from sitting, slide down a slide, and oh, walk without holding on. No big deal, just walking. This is me not freaking out.

Cognitively? Huge leaps. Earlier this month you got stuck under chairs, which was hilarious; no more of that. You’re way more into stuffed toys. You’ve figured out that feeding yourself may be messier, but is infinitely better. You’re starting to get the concept of “gentle” with cats, babies, and most of the time even my face. You’ve figured out that calling me when you wake from a nap, instead of bursting into tears, totally works to bring me to you.

No more falling asleep at the boob: you’ve started to ask to be put to bed. Settling down after that might be tricky, but is a necessary life skill, so we’re both giving you space to learn this. Plus, falling asleep without being held means you can put yourself back to sleep when you wake, sometimes.

Sometimes. Everything is variable. The variability, and the fact that you’re talking up a storm and I understand about 10% of it, means tricky times at the Launch Pad.

Latest food exploits: you’re very thoughtful about coconut curry. Canned sardines are awesome. Blueberries are the best, except muscat grapes are even better. Cheese makes you tremble with excitement (then you make faces while eating it). Today’s toast with tapenade, tomatoes and feta was a smashing success. Cupcakes and ice cream and cat food… oh, my.

You give slobbery kisses and enjoy a little post-nap back rub. You’re getting more clingy cuddly. Spring is finally here, and you’re loving it almost as much as you love dogs.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you those big feelings you’re having will go away. They never do. But you’ll get much better at handling them! You’ll have no choice: eventually it’ll be either that, or I sell you to the next traveling space circus that comes through town.

Love,
-Mama

ps Pix!

Dear Nico,

Last month you turned a year old, and I cheated. This month, I’d best come up with something entertaining and new to write, or else face the possibility that you’ll get bored, stop reading these newsletters, and toddle off into the sunset. Happily, for now you’re still not walking independently, my tiny little captive audience.

We had a birthday party for you, which at this age is mostly a party for everyone else. There were so many everyone-elses that we ended up moving the shindig to a nearby frozen yogurt place. This turned out to be a brilliant idea; there was much merriment, which you took in impressive stride given that it lasted three whole hours. You received many fine gifts, most of them letters that we’ll be requesting every year and saving for later reading. (Thanks for the idea, Offbeat Families!)

Baby NAZ, the love you engender in your social world is astonishing. Your first birthday had to be moved out of the house because so many people wanted to attend. I can only hope that whatever magic you carry today will stay with you in the future. But if it starts to wane, there’s always glitter and frozen yogurt.

(Can it really be that I don’t have a single photo from your birthday party? Yes, it can.)

A small list of ways in which you are barreling towards toddlerhood:

• You’ve entered the stage of using a single word (in this case an emphatic tah) to mean most things for which you would like to have words. These are: fan, light, lamp, cat, dog, [pick me] up, and others. I hear this is a common thing in baby language development.
• The above notwithstanding, you have actual words! This development is recent: the first one emerged this past weekend while we were visiting our friends in New York. Avocado is cacacaca (Mark points out: it stands to reason that your first food word is four syllables long). Today you managed to create recognizable versions of apple and stuck.
• Besides all this, in the last few weeks you’ve been holding forth in fairly long conversational tirades. A language explosion is just around the corner, or already happening, depending on how much the whole “intelligible” thing matters.
• Your hair has gotten long enough that civilized people would trim it. I, of course, am compelled to clip it away from your face and let it grow out a bit. Did you know that there are no baby-safe hair clips? Choking hazards, all of them.
• One morning a couple of weeks ago I left you sitting in the middle of the living room while I went to pack up the lunch bag. I returned to find you standing on the other side of the coffee table from where you had been, holding on to it and looking at me, all, what? Yeah, I pull myself up now. No big deal. Since then you’ve been practicing pulling yourself up on the big bed every morning, holding on to the headboard, prompting grim visions of you tumbling off the bed on the side where the foam bumpers aren’t.
• Speaking of heart attacks, knowing that your newly found interest in climbing stairs (carpeted and bare) is healthy doesn’t stop me from wishing sometimes I could superglue you to the floor until you’re eighteen.
• Oh gods, the preferences. You know a lot more about what you want, and of course don’t have the language to get it yet, so you do this point-and-whine thing. We’ve stepped up your exposure to sign language, because babe, the whining a thing I can take only in small doses. Happily, you seem on board with the sign language, and you practice too.

Last weekend we got in a car with Mark and Eleanor and drove due west, into New York, to visit Sianna and her kids. The weekend getaway was perfect—a sprawling farmhouse, glorious homey food, a dance party in the living room, and a museum floor full of big boxes. You sat inside your very own tiny fort for something like half an hour, exploring the adhesive properties of duct tape.

There’s more, always, but it’s time for sleep.

Love,
-Mama

(ps more pix, and videos)

Dear Nico,

Congratulations, my child! You have survived your fifth month and your first fall off a bed. It was bound to happen, or so They tell me; apparently it takes on average four of these before you start remembering they ever happened. And hey, by the sixth you start forgetting again!

Surviving is hard work, though most days it’s hard to tell from the way you look all cheerful and gregarious. One day I walked into Carolyn’s house after work, and there you were, holding court amid four grownups and two toddlers, squealing with laughter on Michel’s lap. That evening, you continued shrieking for a good hour and a half in a row—as far as I could tell, because it’s fun to shriek. Michel calls this your pterodactyl noise.

This joie de vivre characterizes most of the past month, though not all. To wit: while writing the above two paragraphs yesterday, I went into the bedroom twice to soothe your crying. You were teething hard all day. Physical pain is such a surprise to you every time that I often catch you smiling up at me through tears and quivering lips. The next moment, you register confusion: how can it be that you’re feeling all these different things at once? Welcome to the human condition, little dude.

Lots of big news items this month. Locomotion! Well, sorta. Certainly movement in space—see above re falling off the bed. You roll all the way over. You do that thing where your butt goes way high up and you scoot your legs under you and lurch forward with your upper body. My adorable inchworm zombie. Your back muscles are more defined. You can sit with your back supported for more than seconds at a time, without falling over sideways. You sit in a Bumbo and in a high chair, too.

You talk a lot. When it’s not pterodactyl-moon-language, it’s often an exploration of your own tongue. You make shapes with it and then vocalize. You do this for minutes, often while staring at your hands. Being a baby is some good drugs.

When you’re not working on your development, you’re often sleeping with your butt high in the air. Remember that conversation we were having about having you sleep more than two hours at a time? Well, you’re doing that, mostly. I’m convinced that the frequent-waking pattern is related to the outside weather. This is both fascinating and kind of a bummer, since there’s nothing I can do about it. No matter what the room temperature is, or how humid or dry it is, you follow the weather gods. Maybe I shoulda named you Storm or somesuch. (No. But maybe.)

Or maybe it’s your little body processing the SOLID FOODS you’ve been ingesting. Kid, I’ve been waiting for this for longer than you’ve been alive. Here’s what we know so far:

• sweet potatoes are awright
• prunes are undiluted awesome… no really, please, god, don’t dilute them—certainly not with breastmilk, because that combination is vile
• beets are tasty enough, even though they get your face all screwed up in an I’m-not-sure-about-this way every time you eat them
• jury’s still out on avocado, but then, you’ve only had it once

It’s getting late, baby, so I’m going to say goodnight to the internet and go sleep. Life is full of work and commuting and books and dishes and blog updates and nonstop craziness and even a little TV, but sometimes you just gotta say forget it all, and get some sleep.

Love,
Mama

P.S. more pix here.

Dear Nico,

Happy four months, baby! Let’s talk about health. It’s possibly the most important thing we have, you and I. So your Mother’s Day gift to me of a bad sinus cold, though astonishingly thoughtful given your young age, might have been… a little misguided.

Getting rid of a cold when you can’t sleep it off is HARD. For the first time ever, I lamented not having a full-time co-parent, someone who had signed on for the germs in advance. Both of us being sick, I couldn’t bring myself to ask any of our friends and loved ones to come and be with you while I slept; I wouldn’t have wished this cold on anyone, and nothing was dire, just hard and sleepy and discontent.

We did it, though. We got rid of it. It took a sick day (note to self: next time, take two) and a lot of early bedtime, but we’re healthy once again. Let’s try to stay that way, please.

Taken by Molly Tomlinson at Somerville Open Studios, May 5

It’s WARM! It’s SPRING! You are sleeping longer stretches. Oh, the incomparable joy of it! I credit a combination of warm weather and the breastmilk-in-the-nose trick I remembered to try. Worked like a charm to relieve your congestion. This stuff is magic. Let’s hope I don’t forget it when you get your first pinkeye.

Enough about illness, let’s talk about the adorable. There’s plenty of that. Take the sounds of you sucking on your entire fist in the back seat of the car. Or your extra-fuzzy, velvety head with a lot more hair than last month. Or the way you’re discovering toys—just yesterday Michel reported that you have learned to crinkle the wings of the little stuffed bee.

Speaking of Michel, you have the best caretakers. Three of them, over the four days a week that you’re in “daycare.” You love going to Vanessa’s and hanging out with her and tiny Alex, who is only a month older than you. (I can’t wait until you two start entertaining each other, hopefully in a few months.) You love going to Carolyn’s, who has been packing and unpacking moving boxes and has all the smiles in the world for you. And Michel’s, well. There’s a grownup AND a six-year-old AND a teenager AND a huuuuuge dog who are all fond of you. Pici the great dane, easily seven times your size, likes to lick your hands.

I haven’t even mentioned all our other friends besides the weekday caretakers. I hope that hanging out with all these different people will mean no separation anxiety. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just avoid that altogether?

Your hand-eye coordination is improving. Fingers are tricky to get control of, but darned if you’re not tryin’. A favorite exercise is holding on to my shirt as I put you in the carrier: you’ve discovered that you can keep yourself from falling over to the side. The power! The control! It’s heady.

You’ve definitively found your toes, and are studiously working on holding on to them. Watching you do this, it occurred to me that it’s quite an advanced skill: you have to control your arm and your leg at the same time. I imagine this can get frustrating. But you’re pretty chill about it, and we’ve been talking about practicing.

You’re definitely practicing. Given your increasing love for mouthing everything, most especially your own fingers and my forearm when I’m changing your diapers, it’s only a matter of time until you bring those feet all the way up to your mouth.

Most of your exploration is accompanied these days by a sort of aaaaaohhhhhh. Sounds are fun, even if they’re all vowels so far. An accidental consonant here and there doesn’t count for syllables, but it is cute to practically hear your brain gears turning.

Some of the most entertaining things in the world are: practicing your standing, supported, on top of a grownup’s belly; Baby in the Mirror; the doorway bouncer (you can hang out in that thing for half an hour); having your belly, feet, hands or head nibbled; having me sing to you. Gosh, baby, I hope you continue to be as appreciative an audience as you’re being these days. It may be the best ego trip I’ve ever had.

Speaking of feelings, yours might be growing even faster than your body, which is damn impressive given that during the days when I’m at work you’re eating all the milk I can pump and then some. Thank goodness we had a reserve; it’s depleted enough that I’ve brought the pump home so that hopefully we can build it back up a little. You feel huge to me, though the internet tells me that your weight is average for your age. So when you have FEELINGS, well. It’s a good thing we have a fierce cuddling relationship.

Today, on your four-month birthday, we went out to lunch at a Chinese buffet with babushka, Vlad, and a bunch of their friends—mostly to celebrate my mom’s and a friend’s birthdays now that everyone’s back in town from various travels. You charmed everyone, men and women. I’m told you do this about a hundred percent of the time, no matter where you go. Hang on to your gregariousness, my love. It alone won’t get you many places, but it sure helps to genuinely like other people, and have them like you back.

I like you so much that sometimes, when I have to choose a quiet bedtime for you over an evening with friends, I feel that the consolation prize is way worth it.

Love,
-Mama

(pix)

It’s not that I haven’t been blogging, it’s that I haven’t been doing it here. I feel ok about this, but thought I’d let you know about one project I’ve been working on.

Nico Alexander Zafrin. January 26, 2012. 7lb 9.9oz. 21.5 inches. A tall, skinny newborn who has been gaining weight like nobody’s business. But more about that in the first-month summary that I’m almost done writing. In the meantime: been busy.

Now with matching accessories!

A couple of spots are slightly lighter than the rest, almost turquoise. Dude in a coffee shop said, “Wow, it looks like there’s light coming out of your head.” I think I’ll keep it this way.

Lesson of the evening, learned for the 248th time: don’t drink strong coffee at 8pm if you want your sleep schedule to stay more or less normal.

On the other hand, party! For one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, on the occasion of her moving away to the Wrong Coast. With surprisingly fun karaoke, fantastic people and an impromptu aerial silks performance that, as usual, made me laugh in delight several times.

Conclusion: sleep is for the weak. (“But you’re weak, Vika.” – “Shut up.”)

Rowan berries!

And the tree is a rowan. Beautiful. Photo courtesy of Jill in Norway.

A quick snapshot. But hey, I upload because I can.

Penultimate drum-and-dance of the year in South Amherst yesterday. I brought my drum, even though I don’t have a bag for it yet and it was raining a little – but Molly and I threw garbage bags over the drums, and I’m very happy we did. By the end of the evening my hands were somehow hurting and a little numb at the same time, and I could still feel the just-played drumbeat in my ribcage.

I did better than had seemed possible, given how out of practice I’ve been with things that require sustaining a regular rhythm with my hands (drumming, juggling, playing the guitar which I haven’t done in any sort of sustained way since my first year in grad school). Concentrating on picking out, playing and sustaining relatively simple rhythms for several minutes at a time was great practice.

Molly and Natalie and I stayed over at our friends’ place in Hadley (Inspirit Common), and had breakfast at Cafe Esselon there. Natalie kept feeding us pretend food. The more ridiculously we reacted, the more giggles scattered, sparkling, across the table.

Today my father would’ve been 71 years old. But he’s seven years gone, buried on a gorgeous hill in Lost Angels. I miss him a lot.

I’ve inherited a lot of him. I have his eyes, and his love of driving, and his dislike of being in financial debt to anyone, and his temper – though, I like to think, version 2.0. And also I have his indomitable will, and his analytical skills, and his sense of commitment (with some additional flexibility thrown in; I tend to tinker with recipes).

Thanks, dad. Happy birthday. And to the rest of you, have a fitting instrumental by Daniel Lanois; it’s called “JJ Leaves LA.” I left LA in 1994 with no regrets, having hated it there, and now mom doesn’t live there anymore either – but I’ll go back to visit dad.